APCNews – March 31 2009 – Year X Issue 97

APCNews – March 31 2009 – Year X Issue 97

Not many people
know that behind the Oscar-winning film “Slumdog Millionaire” is a
novel inspired by an experiment that installed a computer in a Delhi
slum. Through a hole-in-the-wall
young children taught themselves to become computer-literate. APCNews
looks at a number of ways the poorest entrepreneurs are using computers
to improve their economic and social circumstances and how others are
using the Web to lend a hand in solidarity.

Last week’s
Forum in South Africa to lower the price of broadbandPress release

GOA (Frederick Noronha for APCNews) - Can Facebook and
YouTube help
the poor tackle their pressing problems? Or is this promise just hype?
One is faced with tough questions: Can “Web 2.0 tools” directly
influence the poor themselves? Would those interested in eradicating
poverty do better to start with the “situation” rather than the
“technology”? Or should one think big and dream of a network of
networks encompassing a billion children and their teachers, families
and friends — nearly all of the poor people in the world, and most of
the rich? BytesForAll co-founder and journalist Frederick Noronha takes
a look at the issue for APCNews. More
>>

BUENOS AIRES (Dafne Sabanes Plou for
APCNews) – “Training in ICT skills gets the community to start thinking
differently and to consider the sources of income available to them
more clearly. From a commercial standpoint, they become aware of the
fact that their products have to meet certain standards of quality in
order to be sold at higher prices,” says Aura Elena Plaza from Villa
Paz, an Afro-Colombian community in the Cali region. Dafne Plou reports
for APCNews on her first-hand experience of the impact access to
information has had on the lives of people in remote villages in Mali,
Africa and Cali, Colombia. More
>>

Your subscription

If you wish to see the text version of this
newsletter, you need to unsubscribe here
and then subscribe again here.

APCNews
is produced by APC
- a worldwide network supporting the use of internet and ICTs for
social justice and sustainable development since 1990. Sister news
services APCNoticias and APCNouvelles offer original coverage in
Spanish and French.